comScore has released their November 2011 U.S. Mobile Subscriber market share report, which reports key trends from the three months ending November 30, 2011. The Android and iOS platforms were the only platforms to grow from the quarter ending August 31, 2011 (with 3.1% and 1.4% growth respectively), with Blackberry (-3.1%), Windows Phone (-0.5%), and Symbian (-0.3%) all continuing their decline.

Android continues to be the most used mobile OS in the US, with 46.9% of all smartphone users owning an Android smartphone. Apple retained the number two spot at 28.7% market penetration, followed distantly by RIM (16.6%), Windows Phone (5.2%), and Symbian (1.5%).

Judging by the last few comScore reports, Android still has plenty of room to grow, most likely at the expense of RIM as more and more enterprise customers are looking to trade in their Blackberries for Android devices. Android has become a powerful enterprise platform, and more and more businesses are recognizing that Android can provide enhanced smartphone functionality with many (or all) of the security features companies are looking for.

Regardless of the reasons, it’s good to see that Android continues to grow at seemingly exponential rates. There’s still plenty of room for growth by pulling customers away from RIM and other platforms, as well as pulling them from the feature phone market which still makes up the majority of cell phone users in the U.S.

We’ll likely see this growth continue for at least another quarter, as the impressive 3.7 million Android devices activated over the Christmas weekend have not yet factored into comScore’s numbers, and won’t until the next report, which is due out in February.

I know a guy on XDA that owns a HD2 and is still using WinMobile 6.5 because in his opinion, Android is not an OS for the power/business user (he has not even gave Android a fair chance, he must have installed a buggy Sense ROM back in the days when Android on HD2 was still being fixed). In my opinion, Android has become a business OS starting with Gingerbread (older versions meaning Froyo have been tweaked/modified to stand a chance with Gingerbread). After using an Android tablet, I want one now more than ever :) I bet we won’t see an article about Apple just like the one claiming that they had activated more iOS devices than Android.

You need to let go of that Droid one…..put it in the collection and move on. Any of the new dual core phones (and even my single core 1ghz phone) will simply blow it away. My Droid one sits next to my Razor and old candy bar Nokia phone.

I am in the same boat. Upgrade is avail in 17 days. I want the Nexus Prime…. but do I wait for a Tegra 3 device? The Nexus is pretty old technology at this point… The delays with the release didn’t help anything.

You get a nexus for updates first and ease to unlock and develop for it. The hardware may be outdated but the os and hardware go hand in hand and were designed for the nexus to run very smooth. No skins to slow the phone down.

Yep, and 2012 looks better because of more and more manufacturers unlocking bootloaders.
And one more thing: I hope, that Google will be allowed to acquire Motorola. It’s going to be a stunning alliance.

Though update cycles may be a problem for some users (all of us here) if, updates are really a separate issue and doesn’t factor into the growth numbers. After all, the phone will keep working like it was intended without an update and I’m sure that’s just fine with a large number of users. I would be curious to see some figures on what percentage of the average users follow, know about or even care about updates.

Regarding the point made by Louis, I think he’s spot on. However, I would add the additional qualifications that if you are bringing a variety of devices to market, they need to be built on a solid, visually appealing, and user friendly OS, and readily available across all carriers.

This is god news for android and happily despite their dominance they are continueing to innovate. I think that Google should look at acquiring RIM to further their inroads to the business market. But what I would most like to see is Google take a hand in timely OS updates and a CONSISTENT user experience from device to device.

I just got a job with a AT&T and while my store might obviously be unique, in the short time I have been there I have yet to see an Android device be sold. Outside of the few basic phones here and there, the iPhones pretty much fly out of my location.

People keep giving me a negative rating but I’m just stating what I have seen. I am an android fanatic and am drooling waiting for the Galaxy Note to finally come stateside. Even so there is not denying that the iPhone sells and it sells damn well. If it wasn’t for the strength in numbers, there would be a problem but right now that is Android’s strength (purely when it comes to sales).

I’m still waiting for the one company to almost truly make android their own and deliver an experience that could single handily match Apple. Right now I feel Samsung is the only one capable of doing that. That or Amazon if they ever decided to make a phone…

just by looking at the numbers over several months looks like iOS has plateaued. That also explains why Appla started keeping the so called “new” features off from previous models. They can’t profit unless they sell a new phone to the same people over and over again. In the mean time Android keeps penetrating to more and more people.